We traveled to Port St Joe from Gainesville and stayed at a very small RV park a block from the beach. The Aqua Bay RV park had full hookups and a little laundry/bathhouse. It was all that we needed and people were super friendly. We were able to catch amazing sunsets by walking to the beach when we saw the sky go colorful. Port St Joe and surrounding areas were hit hard by a hurricane several years ago. They’ve been rebuilding ever since. Many of the old growth trees along the coast have been destroyed. Every building along the highway was brand new or in process of significant rehab. It is a very cute town.
From there we just went about an hour north to Panama City. We stayed in Pine Log State Forest which was about 20 min out of town. We went to a really fun wooden playground on the way, and found another awesome playground in Panama City. We spent a couple hours at St Andrew’s State Park playing on the beach and watching kite and sail boarders having fun.
Then we went to Big Lagoon State Park just outside Pensacola. A big part of the park is closed due to hurricane Sally damage it was a wonderful campground with very friendly Rangers. We messed up and thought we had a reservation (including site number) but when we checked in we realized the reservation never went through. 😐 They were awesome and gave us a spot reserved for emergencies just like this. We’ve had similar instances before as well. Many state parks will set aside a couple campsites that aren’t reserved to accommodate any number of things. We’ve been moved sites or given one of these for: not fitting in the original spot, needing to add a day or two, and reservation mix ups (etc). We drove to Perdido Key in Gulf Islands National Seashore for a day and played on the beach a bit. We did some other housekeeping type things as well in Pensacola. The beaches on Perdido Key were some of the nicest beaches I’ve seen (if only it were a bit warmer so we could swim).
And that wraps up our long tour of the state of Florida. I don’t think we’ll be coming back for a long long time.
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